July 23, 2011

This is a strange story, because there is no report to the police. We're told of a "distraught" message left on the phone machine at Wu's Portland office, and we're not told how old this "young woman" is. Was she underage? Wu acknowledges what the article refers to as an "encounter," but says it was consensual.

Reporters could not verify the young woman's age. Notes on Facebook over the past 18 months indicate she graduated from high school in 2010. California records show she registered to vote in August.

So, she's above the age of consent. Since when do breathless messages on answering machines get reported in the newspaper? The newspaper — The Oregonian — continues:

The alleged incident raises new questions about Wu's behavior during the 1st District congressman's re-election campaign last year...

At this point, we hear about "erratic" behavior that doesn't ostensibly involve sex. What exactly are the "new questions"? This is a cheap and ridiculous article in my view. A woman who is unhappy with her sexual relationship with Wu has called his office but has not called the police, and now we're supposed to review everything else we know about him in some new context? Is this the way we are to do politics in America now?

Note that the woman who has brought this chaos into Wu's career is shielded by the newspaper's policy not to "use the names of victims of sexual assault without their permission." That's convenient. I think if you are going to have a policy like that, you should not report at all unless the alleged victim has reported a crime to the police. It's not fair.

55 comments:

At the breakfast at the Belgium bakery near the Hill, some consultants from K-street suggest that Wu has a problem. It is likely Clinton-Lewinsky. A young woman (is the race/ethnicity known) gets impressed into the power Wu has (and Wu is a big-talker) and thus, we have this situation.

BUT, it will not affect 2012. Mark my words, believe me later. The K-street consultants have already convinced me that OB2 will defeat any GOP with at least 60%. The GOP will not get a single state. It is over for the GOP. Why is it over? No vision, No deliverables, no diversity, etc. As a consultant to one state GOP pol., I can only do so much.

America's Politico, how many bloodies did those K-Street consultants have?

I would agree with them (in part) if they were talking about politics in certain coastal communities and states. Of course "diversity" means not rouge diverse people with the wrong views but the type who stay on the liberal plantation. But there is a big country in between.

Let's assume that Wu's own account of the incident is accurate: He was at the family's home over Thanksgiving in 2010. The young women went outside, Wu followed, and the consensual sexual encounter ensued. He was 55 or 56 at the time. She was 18 or 19.

On those facts, does the incident bother you? It bothers me. While no laws were broken, adults have a moral obligation to protect young adults from their own folly. Adults are NOT supposed to take advantage of a young adult's naivete. In this case, it's worse because Wu was a friend of the family, someone the girl's parents trusted to protect her, and someone she had been taught to admire and respect. He should have known she was likely to deeply regret their encounter afterwards and he should have acted to protect her, not indulge himself at her expense.

Note that the woman who has brought this chaos into Wu's career is shielded...

Wu's career was already in chaos. First, in his 2004 re-election campaign he somehow srvived revelations that he was accused of sexual assault while at Stanford in the 1970s. Then it turn out during his 2010 campaign his staffers were so alarmed by his erratic behavior that they demanded he enter a hospital for psychiatric treatment. So this story today is just the latest thing on the pile.

Bullshit. We also learn that "In 2004, The Oregonian reported on a 1976 case when Wu was a student at Stanford University and was disciplined for trying to force an ex-girlfriend to have sex."

Maybe you didn't get that far. Or got stuck on a big word.

We have an current accusation of "aggressive and unwanted sexual behavior" against some one who has done this very thing before. In his very near past he is divorcing, admits "taken medication for an unspecified mental condition". taking medication, and had been acting emotionally erratic.

You think that's not a story? Would you leave your 18 year old daughter with him?

I remember when Wu was first running for Congress. On election day he was standing on a street corner near our apartment and waving to the passing cars with a sign telling us to vote for him. Nothing wrong with that, but there was something about him that just seemed so ... sleazy. The point being that Wu always struck me as a slimy dirtbag so I'm not in a good position to evaluate the merits of this particular story.

Wu has had serious problems for a long time. Althouse has a genius for posting interesting stories which she accompanies with her own wrong headed analysis. This doubly encourages people to comment.

The bigger picture is that guaranteed one party districts frequently elect terrible congressmen. The controlling party needs to weed out the terrible congressmen at primary time but this doesn't happen reliably.

One great thing about the Tea Party is that it uses the primaries to weed out terrible GOP politicians.

There are two things that are new about this, the first being that they reported something as flimsy as this about a Democrat politician in the first place, and the second being that he is identified as a Democrat early in the story -- not in the lede, but in the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph.

I used to live in this smiling bastard's district. Most of these articles are talking around the previous "allegation of sexual assault", but what was reported in 2004, and never contested by Wu, was that he had tried to rape an ex-girlfriend and failed only because she fought him off. The woman reported it to campus security at the time, who, this being the early 70's, never bothered to pass it on to the real police.

Democrats and pro-choice activists rallied behind him at the time because his politics were correct and they didn't want to lose his seat in the general.

The thing about a new report of non-consensual sex is there already is a pattern of behavior here. If his own party has decided to cut him loose on unproven allegations, its only because that history makes him hard to defend.

And by the way, no, The Oregonian is anything but right-wing, but its one of the bigger papers and there are limits to what it can sit on.

This has been in the making for quite a while here in Portland by the homophobic, anti-immigration crowd in Oregon. Some political rivals in Salem chose to assist them in deposing Wu and so they are amping it up. The guy went through a bad divorce and is recovering mentally so they smelled blood in the water and went after him. It's all phony and now his own wont' even stand with him! The whole thing is disgusting. Will anyone step up to this???

"The thing about a new report of non-consensual sex is there already is a pattern of behavior here."

Wow, one incident over 30 years prior is a pattern??

Come on. Ann is right about this. There is nothing to suggest that this encounter was anything but consensual. To put it another way, I can't imagine any father not going after some old man who forced himself onto his 18 yo daughter, let alone not contacting the police! While this congressmen definitely seems out of sorts (go figure, he's liberal), there is nothing to this story that suggests anything criminal took place.

Roger, Gook is Korean for people. They call themselves Hangook, which means people of the Han River. They call Americans Migook, which they told me means brother people, at least in the south. In the north they call Americans big nosed aids carrying devils.

Just a comment about The Oregonian: they might have a hair trigger on stories about politicians' sexual misbehavior because they fumbled not once but twice--totally missing Bob Packwood's serial slobbering, which the Washington Post broke, and likewise missing Neil Goldschmidt's statutory rape of a child, which Willamette Week broke (and one a Pulitzer). They further booted that one calling Goldschmidt's despicable actions "an affair." So in this case, I don't think it's politics that's dictating the coverage. They're just trying not to get beaten again in their own back yard.

wow. anthony weiner got run off for texting photos of his 'member' to ADULT women and lewd conversation with them, but it's okay that this guy slept with a TEENAGER because it was supposedly consensual? sorry, but criminal or not, sleeping with a donors teen daughter is creepy and it's horrible judgment. does it pass the "conduct himself at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the house" standard? i don't think so.